Summer school....

The boys and I have been working at a more relaxed pace this summer. Over the long summer months, the last thing we want is for our kids to lose their 9 months of school work, or to be so over scheduled that they never get a chance to be kids.

Each day, the kids get to pick one or two subjects that we work on in creative ways. For math, we play tons of math board games or the boys play math games on multiplication.com. For language arts, we do a lot of reading and acting out the story for increased comprehension. For science, we have 5 books of science experiments. For social studies, we actually go places for history lessons. Actually, the next place I want to take the kids is Jackson Plantation right down the street from us.

While Jansen is a more auditory style learner, Caleb is very visual. He likes to see all of his work together in one place. So I made him a binder that incorporates his love of Angry Birds. Each section has worksheets, blank sheets of paper for journaling, and resources for each subject.

So far, it has been very helpful for him in giving him just enough school work so that his mind doesn't turn to mush over the summer. Sure we want to swim, play games, be with friends, sleep late, and be lazy. I don't want to be super structured and be doing school work all morning long either.

Here is what Caleb is using this summer:

He thinks it is hilarious that each section has some sort of Angry Bird association. It is just a little something that helps motivate him to finish his work. We are also using the system that worked for him in school last year where I write out what my expectations for him are, and then he is able to spend 5-10 minutes drawing Angry Birds. So far so good. :)